SKM 2023 – wissenschaftliches Programm

Bereiche | Tage | Auswahl | Suche | Aktualisierungen | Downloads | Hilfe

BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 10: Evolution and Origin of Life

BP 10.3: Vortrag

Dienstag, 28. März 2023, 10:15–10:30, BAR 0106

Unpredictable repeatability in evolutionary dynamics — •Suman Das and Joachim Krug — Institute for Biophysics, University of Cologne, Germany

Biological evolution proceeds through occurrence and fixation of mutations. But how repeatable are evolutionary trajectories? Is the evolution of specific well-adapted genotypes largely a matter of chance, or should we expect the same genotypes to evolve repeatedly? The answer depends in part on the probability distribution of mutational effect sizes. Repeatability is itself a random variable, and for light-tailed distributions it converges to its mean value in the limit of a large number of available mutations. However, for heavy-tailed distributions, we show that the repeatability is much higher but the distribution remains broad, and consequently the repeatability cannot be predicted based on the distribution. This non-self averaging effect is similar to those observed in certain disordered systems, and arises from the fact that the fixation process is dominated by a few mutations even in the limit of infinite mutation number. We discuss the behavior in various heavy-tailed regimes, and illustrate it with applications to empirical data on drug resistance evolution.

REF: S G Das and J Krug (2022). Unpredictable repeatability in molecular evolution. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(39):e2209373119.